Non-believers on rise in Congress

1/5/13 2:34 PM EST

The number of members of Congress who don’t identify with any particular religion is on the rise, according to an analysis by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

In the 96th Congress (1979-80), not a single member of the House or Senate said they didn’t belong to any particular faith, didn’t know or refused to disclose their religion. But in the new 113th Congress, 10 members fall under that category.

That’s twice as many as in the 111th Congress (2009-10).

Pew notes there’s still a great disparity between the percentage of U.S. adults and the percentage of members of Congress who don’t identify with any particular religion.

About one-in-five U.S. adults describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – a group sometimes collectively called the “nones.” But only one member of the new Congress, Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), is religiously unaffiliated, according to information gathered by CQ Roll Call. Sinema is the first member of Congress to publicly describe her religion as “none,” though 10 other members of the 113th Congress (about 2%) do not specify a religious affiliation, up from six members (about 1%) of the previous Congress. This is about the same as the percentage of U.S. adults in Pew Research Center surveys who say that they don’t know, or refuse to specify, their faith (about 2%).

The numbers here caught my eye, not because of the disparity between non-believers in the general population and in Congress, but because I was surprised so many members actually admitted to it.

Religious affiliation has always been a sensitive issue for members of Congress who belong to religious minorities, but it’s especially true for those who don’t identify with any religion at all. The issue is fraught with political peril because of the prominent role of faith in American public life.

As recently as 2007, former California Democratic Rep. Pete Stark caused a stir when he referred to himself as “a Unitarian who does not believe in a supreme being,” a statement that led atheist groups to claim he was the first member of Congress to say publicly that he did not believe in God.

During my time as editor of the Almanac of American Politics, I discovered the sensitivity of the issue first-hand -- the thorniest, and testiest, conversations with members or their staffs usually involved attempts to identify their faith as part of their biographical data.

In any case, the Pew numbers seem to be a sign that the taboo about religious identification is being broken and members of Congress are increasingly comfortable admitting they don’t adhere to any particular faith.